Fluorine compounds are extremely important as chemical products such as functional materials, compounds for medicines and agrochemicals, and electronic materials, the intermediates of the chemical products, or the like.
Fluoride, hydrogen fluoride, sulfur tetrafluoride, etc., have been used as fluorinating agents to obtain a target fluorine compound by fluorinating a various organic compound as a starting material. These fluorinating agents, however, are difficult to handle due to their toxicity, corrosiveness, explosion risk at the time of reaction, etc., and thus require special devices or techniques.
A reaction for introducing a fluorine atom into an organic compound by utilizing nucleophilic substitution with a fluoride ion has recently been developed, in addition to various fluorinating agents used for the reaction.
For example, iodine pentafluoride (IF5) is known as a powerful fluorinating agent with high oxidizability; however, it is a dangerous liquid fluorinating agent because it reacts with moisture in air and decomposes while generating HF. Non-patent Literature 1 recently reported that IF5 having such features becomes a stable white solid (IF5-pyridine-HF) in air when mixed with pyridine HF, and is effective for fluorination of various sulfur compounds.